Energy Consumption by Sector

Replacing coal with nuclear, solar, and wind for electricity generation and increasing the fuel efficiency of American vehicles are the most effective ways to reduce American carbon dioxide emissions and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Transportation and electricity generation are the two greatest practical challenges to America’s desire to address climate change. The challenges these sectors pose are quite different and difficult to resolve.

The generation of electricity in the United States is heavily reliant on coal. Roughly 50% of all electricity consumed in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants. With the introduction of better emissions controls, coal plants have managed to significantly reduce the level of pollutants they emit, but nevertheless continue to produce CO₂ at alarming rates. Technology to capture and sequester carbon emission remains in its infancy. No coal-fired power plant captures any significant amount of its carbon emissions at present.⁹ There are also tremendous logistical problems with sequestering massive amounts of carbon even if it were captured. Reducing the number of coal-fired plants is a necessary step to address CO₂ emissions, but doing so would require a significant investment in an alternative infrastructure to produce and efficiently distribute electricity.

In comparison, the transportation sector has the fastest energy demand growth rate and it is also most reliant on the most problematic energy source — imported petroleum.

The United States lags behind many industrialized nations in mass transportation and inter-city connectors like highspeed rail. Going from London to Paris by rail — a distance of slightly more than 200 miles — takes two-and-a-quarter hours.¹⁰ Amtrak from New York to Boston — roughly the same distance — takes three-and-a-half hours, literally 50% longer.¹¹ Because the United States is so large and spread-out, compared to many other industrialized nations, we face unique challenges in the transportation sector.

Nonetheless, total vehicle fuel efficiency has barely improved in over 20 years, even as the number of vehicles on the road has continued to increase dramatically.¹² New fuel economy standards announced by the Obama administration in May of 2009 will hopefully lead to improvements. Progress on this front would significantly reduce both America’s carbon emissions and reliance on foreign oil.

In the past 20 years, energy consumption per real dollar of GDP has declined by approximately 50%.¹³ Interestingly, cost savings measures and greater efficiency in American industry have resulted comparatively in less energy consumption growth than in other major sectors of the U.S. economy. This demonstrates that economic incentives can drive significant improvements in energy efficiency.